


The Slightest Slip

by miihakeka



Series: the songs of angadur [2]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, BAMF Bilbo, Bilbo is an Orc, Bilbo's Name Isn't Actually Bilbo, Culture building, Everything Will Be Explained, Gen, Name Changes, Orc Culture, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sassy Bilbo, Slow Build, Worldbuilding, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-11 21:50:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miihakeka/pseuds/miihakeka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By the time Thorin Oakenshield realizes he's hired an orc to be his burgler, it's a bit late to do anything about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Pâshta did not particularly enjoy touching blood. But there were some things you just had to do, feelings to the contrary aside, and looting the bodies of dead Rangers was one of them.

At least she was getting something out of it, she decided, as she removed a newly appropriated dagger from its sheath and inspected it. She wasn’t exactly a weapons expert -- Shatûp was more the sort -- but just from the feel of it in her hand, she could tell that it was well balanced and likely to last a long time if properly cared for. Some members of the clan would have objected to using the weapon of an Untainted, on ideological grounds if nothing else, but Pâshta couldn’t say she shared the opinion. Weapons weren’t evil, in the end, and it was better to have the comfort of a good blade on your person. She’d never been that skilled at making her own knives.

Smiling slightly, Pâshta re-sheathed the dagger and tucked it into her belt. A cursory pawing through the rest of the dead Ranger’s affects revealed a sword and a coil of lightweight rope, as well as a fire-making kit. She snatched up the kit immediately, mind already tallying the possible bargains she could get by bartering it away. The sword was discarded as a matter of course -- it was designed for a human, as the Ranger was, and a hobbit like herself wouldn’t have gotten very far with it indeed.

It was as she crouched there on the ground, idly weighing the weight of the rope in her hands, that she heard it.

For a single, terrifying moment she imagined that the Ranger wasn’t fully dead, and before she realized how _stupid_ she was being she had whipped out her knife and stabbed it deep into the human’s neck.

At the next body over, Tahil peered at her from where she had been sorting through saddlebags. “Are you okay, Pâsh?” she asked, squinting at her.

“I’m -- f-fine,” said Pâshta, still shaken. She wrenched her knife from the flesh of the Ranger’s throat, wincing slightly at the congealing blood that came with it, coating the blade like honey. “I thought -- just jumpy, that’s all.”

“Well,” said Tahil, slowly picking her way over to Pâshta, “if he _was_ still alive, he’s not anymore. No worries, yeah?” She grinned, showing off her filed canines.

“Yeah,” Pâshta echoed, smiling up at her friend. “Here, look,” she said, “this one’s as loaded as a dragon. Do you know if anyone needs a new fire-kit?”

Tahil opened her mouth as though to reply, but instead of a familiar voice, Pâshta heard it again.

Tahil’s mouth promptly snapped shut. The two friends stared at one another for a moment.

“Not the Ranger,” Tahil finally managed to choke out.

“No,” said Pâshta, looking around warily. The sound -- _it_ \-- had sounded like a noise of pain, but high-pitched, and strangely muffled. Moreover, it couldn’t possibly have come from the dead Ranger, but it was close by nonetheless. A quick scan of the area showed no real options for effective hiding. There was another dead Ranger, and a horse, but both were being steadily looted by other kin-members. Beyond that, there wasn’t much -- a slight furrow in the ground that couldn’t have hidden even a small hobbit, a few scraggly bushes, a burlap sack...

Pâshta blinked, looking at the offending object more closely. Based on its position, it had probably been thrown from one of the horses when they had taken them down. Nobody had yet gotten around to searching it, given how far away it had fallen.

It _moved_.

A small movement to be sure, and one she might not have noticed if she hadn’t been watching carefully. It was still enough to catapult her onto her feet.

Tahil jerked back, looking up at her with furrowed brows. “Pâsh, what -- ”

“There’s something alive in that sack.”

The other hobbit narrowed her eyes, slowly rising until she stood beside her friend with a throwing knife at the ready. “Any idea what?” she asked, her voice slightly hushed.

“I don’t know,” said Pâshta. “Probably small,” she added, raising her voice as if trying to be reassuring. “I bet it’s just a couple of squirrels or rabbits they caught during the day for their night meal.”

Tahil didn’t look very reassured. “Why is it being so still, if it’s just squirrels?” Pâshta didn’t have an answer ready, and Tahil stepped towards the bag before she could come up with one. “Let’s just look. Then we’ll know.”

The sack grew even stiller as they approached, and Pâshta tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach. Tahil got there first, but simply stood, staring down at the sack as though the Eye Above would suddenly grant her the power of all-seeing. Pâshta raised an eyebrow at her, and she merely shrugged in response, so she knelt, feeling secure in the knowledge that Tahil’s knives were ready to protect her if anything happened.

By the Exiled One, she hoped it was only a couple of squirrels.

Using her newly acquired dagger, she cut the rope holding the sack closed. A soft noise came from inside, sounding panicky, and the something inside moved, squirming away from the pair of them. Tahil reacted first, stepping on a loose part before it could roll very far. The squirming continued for a few moments before finally subsiding into a series of gulping, panicked sobbing sounds.

“That is not a squirrel,” said Tahil.

Pâshta didn’t dare to look up and meet Tahil’s eyes. It was, of course, not a squirrel. But she didn’t want to be forced to the inevitable conclusion any faster than she had to be.

She reached for the mouth of the sack, before realizing that she still had her dagger in hand. Quickly she withdrew, sheathing it and tucking it into her belt somewhere where it would be out of sight. Then, hesitantly, she parted the mouth of the sack and leaned down to peer inside.

Impossibly wide eyes met hers, tears slipping silently down cheeks caked with dirt. A child. Pâshta’s eyes flicked to the ears -- shell-shaped -- and the feet -- with little tufts of hair. A _hobbit fauntling._

A Tainted fauntling, if the familiar scaly texture lying thickly on her tongue didn’t lie to her, and to Pâshta’s knowledge it never had.

“Shhhh,” she heard herself speak, though how she could hear anything over the wind rushing by her ears she could not say. A fauntling. A _fauntling_ , an innocent fauntling, not older than ten winters if she were to judge, and suddenly the thought of touching more blood was decidedly appealing, if only to make that pair of depraved Rangers _hurt_ \--

“Shhhhh,” was all she could say, slowly reaching a hand into the bag. The fauntling went rigid, body shaking uncontrollably as his eyes tracked her hand. Pâshta continued to make hushing noises, placing her hand on the fauntling’s back. She half-expected a struggle, and was rather surprised when she found none, despite the whimper that escaped the little one when she touched him.

“I’ll go tell the others.” Tahil’s voice floated into Pâshta’s ears, sounding harder and sharper than dwarven-wrought iron, and oddly flat at the same time. Pâshta only nodded, unable to look away from the now-crying fauntling, and Tahil’s footsteps faded swiftly into the ever-present roaring.

“There now, I won’t hurt you,” she murmured to the fauntling, who gave no sign of understanding. “Oh dear.” Pâshta sighed, looking worriedly at the sack for a moment before extending another arm towards him. “Come on, hush. It’s okay now.” Gently, she slipped one hand onto the his back, where she felt -- _ah, yes, that would explain why he hadn’t fought her_ \-- and slid another underneath his body before pulling him out of the sack as gently as she could.

The fauntling was shaking and whimpering again by the time she had pulled him free, and she half-consciously kept up a steady stream of reassurances as she fumbled to untie the rope around his wrists. The skin underneath had been rubbed raw by the coarse twine, and though there were some scabs the wounds still bled sluggishly.

Pâshta had to bit her lip viciously to stop herself from tensing in anger.

The fauntling had stopped crying, and was staring at her. The trembling hadn’t ceased, but it had gotten better, and Pâshta forced herself to smile through the simmering rage at all things Ranger. “There,” she crooned. “You’re safe now, yes?”

The fauntling didn’t react. Now he was staring at her head, though his gaze was somewhat off to the side, as though -- “Oh,” said Pâshta, turning her head obligingly. “You like my ears? See, they’re just like yours. I’m a hobbit too.” Unsurprisingly, the fauntling didn’t respond, but he did, very slowly, reach out an arm toward the offered ear and trace the edges with his fingertips.

“Now,” said Pâshta, “what clan are you from, hmm? Can you speak?”

The fauntling did not reply, but the trembling finally ceased, and he suddenly went limp, tiny hands grabbing for Pâshta’s tunic. “Yes, exactly,” said Pâshta, slowly carding a hand through his hair. “See? The bad humans are all gone now. We killed them. It’s okay.”

Slowly, the roaring left her ears as the fauntling continued to relax against her, and Pâshta rearranged her legs, doing her best not to disturb him. Now that she was no longer preoccupied by the task of reassuring the frightened child, she was able to take a few moments to examine him. The fauntling was caked all over with dirt -- and _blood_ , if she didn’t mistake that reddish tinge -- but even so, she could make out the golden-bronze color of his hair through the grime. She tried to recall which clans had a predominance of golden hair, but their names eluded her. They didn’t normally live close by, and her kin-group had not exchanged a spouse with them in living memory.

She didn’t quite know how long she sat there doing her best to be a comforting presence, but eventually she became aware of soft footsteps behind her. Turning, she saw Tahil, eyes still hard, accompanied by Gaza and Hontai. Gaza darted forwards immediately, rooting around in her various pouches for different herbs and medicines, while Hontai hung back, eyeing the abandoned burlap sack with revulsion and no small amount of hatred.

The fauntling shrieked and flailed when Gaza tried to take one of their wrists to apply a salve. Pâshta instinctively readied herself to deal with an attempt at escape, but almost precisely the opposite happened, as the fauntling tried to burrow even farther into her side than he already had.

Gaza huffed out a sad breath. “Well,” she said, patting Pâshta on the shoulder, “it looks like you’re going to play healer for a day, my dear.”

Pâshta made a face, but accepted her lot gracefully. The fauntling needed healing, and she would do it if she had to. Slowly, she was able to coax him into letting her take first one wrist, then the other, and applied salve and bandages under Gaza’s guidance. Tahil and Hontai had gathered up the sack and stalked off -- probably to burn it, if the looks on their faces were any indication.

Once the fauntling’s wrists were wrapped, he burrowed again into Pâshta’s side, hiding his face in her tunic. Pâshta looked up to see Gaza smirking at her, and she had to fight back the urge to snap. The “What are you looking at?” still came out a bit ruder than she’d meant.

“We always did wonder when you would see fit to have a child,” Gaza said, prodding her side lightly. “Now it seems the Eye Above has seen that you would not do it on your own, and so has provided you with one.”

“If this is the way They choose to do it, I would rather They not,” said Pâshta, sending a short glare at the darkening sky above her.

“Aye, and if we had not killed these Rangers, who knows what might have befallen this little one,” replied Gaza.

Something inside Pâshta broke, and she found herself blinking back tears. “He can’t be more than _ten_ , Gaza. Not old enough to lift a blade or do any damage...!”

The elderly healer patted her on the shoulder. “I know, dear. I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow I actually made a thing. Am I cool yet?
> 
> Yes, I know this chapter is full of OCs. Don't panic. It's a prologue. There will be lots of canon characters in the next chapter.


	2. The Disappearance of Bilbo Baggins

A sense of peace and calm swept over Gandalf as he rounded the final bend in the road and gazed upon Hobbiton. It had been years since he had been in the Shire -- not since the Old Took had died -- yet the region looked just the same as it had back then. The Istar had walked through the night, for sleep was much less necessary for him than it was for other beings. Even had he settled down to sleep in the Green Dragon, he doubted he would have done much but toss and turn. The task ahead, and the many things that had yet to be done, had had him in a state of high nerves for nearly the entire month.

Still, when he focused on the light breeze ruffling the grass and the sound of the early morning birds chirping and twittering in the bushes, the whirlwind of thoughts that occupied his mind slipped away. A few hobbits passing by on foot glanced somewhat suspiciously at him, but Gandalf did not care, and made sure to give off the sense of someone who did not even notice. Instead, he waved cheerily at each squinting passerby and wished them a good morning, leaving them somewhat bemused and doing their best to respond in kind without showing their bewilderment. They were hobbits, after all, and it wouldn’t do to be seen as impolite.

When the more populated areas of Hobbiton rose out of the hills in the distance, signaling that Gandalf was about to leave the fields, he had to resist to urge to stop and relax, even if just for a little while. It was a most pleasant day for relaxing, for it was early April, and the breezes were soft and still held a cold more akin to fall, though the air was warm. A low murmur of carried voices reached the Istar from the center of Hobbiton. It seemed it was a market day, and the gentle hum of indistinct background voices would be an excellent music for relaxing in a breeze-ruffled field of grass. Still, he refused the instinct. He was not here for leisure, but for a very particular errand, and thus he had a specific destination in mind. Further, he had a deadline. The remainder of the Company would be arriving in the Shire sometime in the late afternoon, and he should like to see to his business before noontime had passed.

Bag End had received some renovations over the years since Gandalf had last visited, including the addition of a new set of bushes by the front fence, dotted with pale and delicate yellow-white flowers. For a few moments, Gandalf searched the gate for a bell. Finding none, he gently pushed it open and proceeded up the flagstone path to the front door, which was painted a bright and cheerful green like the color of fresh leaves.

The door opened quite punctually at the first ring of the bell, and Gandalf smiled genially at the hobbit on the other side of the threshold, even as he privately thought to himself that Bilbo Baggins was, perhaps, a bit rounder than he had expected. This adventure would surely do him some good, then. But he did not voice any of these thoughts. "How are you, Master Baggins?" he asked instead, smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. "Perhaps I might beg a moment of your time?"

"How -- how do you do, sir," replied Bilbo, eyes darting around confusedly. For a moment, he looked like he was about to lean out the doorway and check the sides of the house, as if he were afraid this might be a joke, with spectators pressed against the wall waiting to burst into laughter at his reactions. Apparently he thought better of it. "Of course you may, though I'm afraid I've no idea what business you might possibly need or want from me. I'm nobody special."

"Nobody special!'"cried Gandalf. "Why, to hear you speak that way, it disheartens me, Bilbo Baggins. I have no doubt Belladonna Took would have most strenuously disagreed with that assessment, and I must say that so would I." Bilbo drew back suddenly, his eyes narrowing.

"What cruel joke are you trying to play, sir, coming trundling along on this good day and bringing up sad memories? I will not stand here and be insulted by my cousin's name."

The sun against his back did not feel nearly so warm anymore. Gandalf felt as though something were crawling over his back as the hobbit spoke, traveling up and down his spine in an odd combination of the tickling sensation of an insect's legs upon skin and the small shudders one gets when they have taken a cold drink too quickly. The tips of his fingers were suddenly cold and numb, as though he had pressed them upon ice. "I'm sorry, are you not Bilbo Baggins?"

"I most certainly am not," the hobbit said, eyes hardening. "I am his second-cousin, Posco, and you, you come here calling me by his name, as though he were still alive?"

.oOo.oOo.oOo.

Truth be told, Gandalf remembered naught else of what Posco Baggins said to him on the threshold of Bag End. He later concluded that in his shock the phrase "Bilbo dead...?" must have slipped from his lips, for he was just as soon being ushered into the hobbit-hole by Posco, seated upon the larger armchair in the sitting room, and offered hot tea. He accepted dumbly, unable to prevent his thoughts from whirling throughout his mind. The tea was certainly hot, but his tongue was numb to whatever flavor it had, and he could not even begin to place it. Bilbo Baggins, dead -- missing -- lost -- whatever the cause or effect, his desired burglar could not possibly take the job.

Posco's wife, Gilly, handed the wizard a lightly golden-brown biscuit with jam and cream spread upon the top, her eyes shining with sympathy. "Thank you," Gandalf managed, biting into it automatically. This, he tasted a little bit more than the tea, and the sweetness of strawberries welled up on his mouth. He still could not tell whether the lack of flavor was from his emotional shock, or from the way he had gulped down his tea unheeding of the scalding his tongue would receive. His eyes searched throughout the room and finally rested on Posco Baggins, sitting in the armchair across from him.

"I apologize, Master Baggins, for my insensitivity," he said first of all. "It was brought on by ignorance, and for that I am ashamed."

The hobbit sighed, and waved a hand in the air. "You are forgiven," he said. "It happened a very long time ago, and I thought that you must have known. You're Gandalf the wizard, right? You knew Aunt Belladonna -- I suppose I thought that word must have reached you at some point."

"I did indeed know Belladonna. A finer hobbit there never was, though we had not been in contact for many years before she died," Gandalf said, taking another bite from his biscuit. "If I may ask... what happened to Bilbo?" The crawling feeling remained upon him, but now Gandalf was beginning to recognize it as dread.

Posco took a breath. "All of my knowledge comes from hearsay, you understand," he said. "I was not yet born when it happened -- Bilbo was only eight. I first heard the story later in my tweens. People don't like to talk about it." At Gandalf's nod, he continued. "You'll know how the Bagginses used to go vacationing to Buckland in the summer sometimes." In fact, Gandalf had not known this, but he merely nodded for Posco to continue. As the words unfolded from the gentlehobbit's mouth, the Istar fumbled within his sleeve for a moment before drawing out his pipe. A second hand went into a pocket, searching for the box of pipe-weed he carried with him.

Still, when the tale was told, Gandalf felt as though nothing had been clarified. It so happened, Posco said, that on one of the Bagginses' Buckland vacations, young Bilbo had been allowed out to play with a friend of the family who lived just a ways outside of the town. When the visit was over, this friend of the family then walked the young hobbit back to the outskirts so he could get home safely. That was the last anyone had ever seen of Bilbo Baggins.

"But surely you must have some idea of what happened?" Gandalf probed, puffing on his pipe in an effort to remain calm. Hobbits loved their children, and while it was impossible to guard against all potential dangers to an inquisitive hobbitling, Gandalf could not imagine that it had been anything so simple. Accidents happened, but according to Posco they had never found a body, in all the years since. They had even searched parts of the Old Forest, though their efforts had been fruitless, and it was only after many years that nobody had searched at all. To Gandalf, this suggested far more sinister purposes afoot. True, the incident had happened years and years ago -- there was nothing to be done for it now. Still he felt uneasy about the whole thing. "What of the friend? They were the last to see Bilbo alive, no?"

Posco shrugged, though it was more a twitch of the shoulder than a full shrug. "I don't know his name -- know nothing about him, really. Ma said he was a hermit who lived outside the town, but took a liking to Bilbo and let him play in his garden. Aunt Belladonna and Uncle Bungo trusted him. He said he dropped Bilbo off at the town limits, like he always did."

"Mmmm." Gandalf ground himself a bit more pipe-weed, for he was running out. Posco had said next to nothing about this friend of the family, though he figured quite prominently in the tale. "Does nobody know his name?"

"I suppose someone must," Posco murmured. His shoulder twitched again, in that odd not-really shrug of his. "I know the shirrifs suspected he might have something to do with it for a while, but he had never done anything else wrong and he helped with the search around the Buckland area and within the Old Forest. He was just as grieved by the whole ordeal as Uncle Bungo and Aunt Belladonna were."

"I see." Gandalf did not see, not entirely -- he could see what the hobbits thought they saw, and it was not enough for him. He should very much like to pay this unknown hobbit a visit and see for himself what kind of a person he was. A part of him balked at the idea that a hobbit might have committed violence against another hobbit -- and a child at that! -- but the information was so scarce that it smacked of someone who was hiding from something. It was suspicious. Nevertheless, he did not press the issue any farther. "So nobody has any idea what happened to him?"

"To Bilbo?"

"Aye."

"Nothing for sure," said Posco. He frowned, furrowing his brow. "But... well. Same day Bilbo vanished, the Bounders found an orc wandering around Buckland. They were lucky it was alone, and there were a couple of Rangers there too, who helped them get rid of it."

Gandalf could not prevent his eyebrows from rising precipitously. He had known that there was something off about this tale, and now it had revealed itself to him. Orcs were not likely to come so near to the Shire without purpose, and if that purpose had not been to raid Buckland -- and it surely had not, for Gandalf would have heard of it before if orcs had attempted a raid in that area -- then it was almost unquestionable that their presence had something to do with the unnatural disappearance of Bilbo Baggins. "Orcs? In broad daylight? In summer?"

"Just one orc," said Posco.

"And people think that this orc killed young master Baggins," Gandalf ventured. A pack of orcs in Buckland was unbelievable enough, but somehow a single orc even more so, in those circumstances... though a single orc would likely find it easier to get into the heart of Buckland without being noticed -- but what was he thinking? Orcs did not sneak about, they charged directly for you, weapons awave and yelling all the while.

"Aye," murmured Posco. "Aye. That they do." He stared into the hearth for a moment, as though the sight of charred wood would distract him. Gandalf sensed that the hobbit had reached his limits for speaking of disturbing events, and did not press him for more. Still he was disturbed, and mightily so. The whole situation -- the friend about whom nobody seemed to know much, the single orc, the way young Bilbo Baggins had simply been there one moment and gone the next -- sat incredibly ill with him, and Gandalf had long since learnt to trust his instincts in these matters. What importance a young hobbit like Bilbo could have had to make him the victim of a kidnapping attempt -- or a murder -- was anyone's guess, and Gandalf had no good ones. How he longed to be able to march out the door of Bag End and go to Buckland to locate this 'friend' for himself -- ! But he was awaiting the dwarves, and now that there would be no burglar he would need to get them all down to the Green Dragon somehow.

Eventually the hobbit woman -- Gilly, Gandalf recalled -- entered the room, stepping softly in accord with the heavy atmosphere of silence that had descended. "Dear," she said quietly, tapping Posco on the arm, "lunch is fixed." She turned then to peer up at Gandalf, for all that he still sat upon the armchair. "There's enough for a Big Person like you, too, Master Gandalf, if you'd like to stay."

Gandalf's first instinct was to protest that she ought not to have taken the time to make the extra food, but soon he recalled that he was in the Shire amongst hobbits, who valued hospitality almost as much as the dwarves valued gold. He did not want to seem rude. "I think I may not," he replied instead, "if I do not offend. I fear I have brought enough melancholy into your house as it is." He made to stand, being mindful of the ceiling. He had knocked his head upon the intricate rafters of Bag End one too many times.

"What?" Posco cried, standing also. "No, don't be silly. You didn't do so intentionally, and you are a guest here. Why, we've barely fed you!" He hurried off into the other room after a quick glance at his wife, returning with a plate of muffins dotted with dark cooked berries. "I feel wretched. I hope you can forgive me for being such a poor host -- here my wife has outstripped me!" He cast a glance at her, which Gandalf supposed was meant to be a glare, but looked more like a good-natured ribbing. Gilly laughed at her husband's antics, her voice high and clear like bells.

"Never mind him and his hysterics," she said to Gandalf. "I am sure you needed somebody to get you back into the regular gossip-circles. I doubt that any hobbit could speak of that ordeal and still make good, wholesome food. It had to be one or the other. Besides," she continued, "I happened to hear you mention you had business to discuss, before Posco let you in. You've said nothing of it. Perhaps we can still help, even if we are not the hobbits you were seeking." She smiled up at him.

Gandalf hummed, tapping his front teeth with his pipe as he retrieved a muffin from the plate in Posco's hand. It was still faintly warm, and the dread he felt over the entire situation was somewhat eased by having it in his palm. "Indeed, I have not," he mused. "I suppose I will stay for lunch after all, then."

.oOo.oOo.oOo.

Lunch was filling and terribly delicious, with fried cakes of fish meat to be dipped in ginger sauce, large bowls of greens dressed in syrupy extract of raspberry and a roast casserole of potatoes, scallions, pea-pods, and carrots. Gilly had said she had made enough to feed a Big Person. Gandalf rather felt, as he watched Posco clean out the casserole bowl, that they needn't have worried about accommodating him, for he had been far outstripped by the two hobbits in the realm of appetite. Clearly he had been away from the Shire for too long to have forgotten how much a hungry hobbit could consume in a single sitting, though he supposed that perhaps he could be forgiven for not eating his due, when he had been explaining the history of the dwarves of Erebor, and the purpose of the Company.

"... and I was hoping," he said, setting his fork down, "that I might be able to convince Bilbo Baggins to take the job of burglar. But..." He sighed, folding his hands together on the table before him and staring at them. "As you can see, my plans have been quite thoroughly disrupted."

"A dragon!" Posco had exclaimed when Gandalf first mentioned Smaug -- now he said it again. "A dragon! A hobbit burgling from a dragon's hoard -- I can barely imagine it." He looked at Gandalf with awe, and perhaps a little bit of suspicion as well. "I can't think how you were planning to convince him to go, had he been alive. Even the foolhardiest Took would think twice about going up against a dragon, I am sure. Whatever made you think of him?" He scooped the final bite of casserole into his mouth, garnishing it first with a dab of ginger sauce.

"I must admit, I may have been projecting Belladonna onto him." Gandalf dabbed at his mouth with a napkin and offered his plate to Gilly, who was beginning to clean up. "But I remember when he was a small hobbitling -- he mustn't have been more than 5 years old -- he was so enthused by the idea of adventures. He even ran off into the forest looking for elves more than once, and that was while I was visiting! Belladonna nearly tied a leash upon that boy, he got into such mischief." Here Gandalf paused to chuckle to himself, as he recalled the incident in question. Belladonna had dragged the young hobbit home by his ear and Gandalf and Bungo, who had been smoking together, had been treated to a bystander's view of the most blistering scolding Gandalf had yet to hear in all his years. In that moment, he had sworn never to willingly get on the bad side of Belladonna Took-Baggins. The force of nature had certainly managed to scold Bilbo into the shame of a young child who knows they have done wrong, but doesn't quite consciously realize it until it is placed plainly before them. He had been quite apologetic afterwards for the fright he had given to his parents.

Yet the thoughts of such happy times drew Gandalf's mind back to the way that little, laughing hobbit had vanished so abruptly, and without a trace. He was still deeply disturbed by the events Posco had described to him, for it simply made no sense. The players were clearly defined, it was true, but the Istar could not for the life of him pinpoint the joining thread between those players. Nor had he any idea of their motives. Oh, he could certainly conjecture, for that was a skill very particular to Gandalf among the Istari in Arda. Saruman was better at reading the faces and actions of people who had been set before him, but when it came to the imagination of causes for things that were, strictly speaking, hearsay, he faltered some. Radagast... well, what could one say about Radagast? Gandalf had not seen the brown Istar in years.

But even in this case, it seemed, the wild conjecturing of Gandalf the Grey had been stumped. What would precipitate the disappearance of a hobbit child that also involved a shady, secretive 'friend-of-the-family' and a single orc wandering around Buckland?

"... Master Gandalf?" Gilly's voice broke through the Istar's dark musings, and he looked up from the tabletop that he had been squinting at. "Are you well? Is something the matter?" She had finished clearing the table, and now both she and Posco were looking at him, their brows furrowed in worry.

Gandalf started, and took a moment to resettle himself in his seat. "I apologize," he told them, giving the hobbits a faint smile. "I am still in some shock, I fear, from the news of Bilbo. I was hiding it well until just then."

Gilly offered him a white cloth. "I can understand that. It is not a topic fit for a decent time of day, but sometimes these things can't be helped." Gandalf nodded gravely back at her, and took the proffered cloth. It was damp and faintly fluffy to the touch, and he examined it briefly before looking back up at Gilly with a quirked eyebrow. "For you to wash up with," Gilly explained, casting a look up and down his grey-robed frame. "You can't possibly expect us to let you leave without giving you the chance, can you?"

Ah, hobbit hospitality. It was far, far more valuable than gold.

.oOo.oOo.oOo.

In fact, hospitality is a very prominent hobbitish virtue. It is, perhaps, the most prominent of hobbit virtues, though it is equally likely that it only seems to be so prominent because it is the virtue to which outsiders are most often subjected. If a hobbit cannot feed a guest full to stuffed, entertain them in comfort, and give them a lovely warm bed to sleep on should they wish to stay the night, why, then they are barely a hobbit at all.

It is perhaps quite lucky for the poorer hobbits, then, that the Shire is so rich. No family is so badly off that they may need to give up their own food so that their guest might be hosted, though the poorest will by necessity have to check themselves to ensure that they do not host too many guests at once, or in too quick succession. Hospitality may be a virtue in the Shire, but only so long as the host does not bite off more than they can chew.

Of course, the wealthy families and landed gentry of the Shire have no such limitations.

.oOo.oOo.oOo.

It was this same hobbit hospitality that Gandalf now sought to escape. In a manner of speaking, his business had indeed been finished by noontime, but then he had stayed for lunch, and when he had returned from washing up he had offered his aid to Gilly in clearing the table, washing the dishes, and putting them all away, so that it was nearing mid-afternoon teatime when the last plate was put back in its proper cabinet. Gandalf just about jumped when he looked at the clock, and hurriedly went to collect his cloak and staff.

Gilly trotted along behind him, still drying her hands on a towel -- she hadn't allowed Gandalf to do much of anything but dry the dishes and put them away, saving the difficult work of washing for herself. Of course, to make your guest do any work at all is normally considered to be as boorish as you can get in the Shire, but Gandalf was a wizard and had never felt terribly comfortable being as waited upon as hobbit hospitality would have him be. Allowances had to be made. "Aren't you going to stay for tea?" she asked hopefully. "It won't take but a minute to put the kettle on, and you've been working so!"

Gandalf was busy wrapping himself back up in his cloak, but he spared the moment for a short little bow. "I would love to, Mistress Baggins, but I can't stay. It's much too late in the afternoon already, and I expect the Company will begin to arrive at Bywater any time now. I have to hurry and meet them before they get too far on their journey here, or they will find themselves walking all the way to Hobbiton and back without any supper."

Posco had emerged back into the sitting room while they spoke -- funny, Gandalf hadn't even noticed him leave. He had forgotten how quietly unobtrusive hobbits could be. "What's this about supper?" he asked, his hands stuck in his waistcoat pockets. "I thought it was about teatime now, not supper quite yet."

Gandalf opened his mouth to quickly repeat the explanation once more, hoping that he would be able to open the door and get outside while he was talking. Unfortunately, Gilly was just a bit faster than him. "I think," she said, "that Master Gandalf is concerned about ensuring that his Company does not need to miss their supper by walking through it. Though I can't see how you could hope to catch them before they leave Bywater." She turned to Gandalf as she continued. "I shouldn't expect you to get more than halfway back before you meet them, if they're in Bywater now, and at that point they might as well come all the way here. Besides, if they are starting out on a journey tomorrow, they'll need a much better meal than what the Green Dragon can provide, I assure you." She turned on Posco, flipping the towel over her shoulder and giving her husband (what Gandalf assumed to be) a significant look. He couldn't really tell, for she was facing away from him.

Posco returned her gaze for a while, his expression about as inscrutable as Gilly's for all that Gandalf could see his face. The Istar was beginning to consider taking the opportunity to flee -- the longer he waited, the closer the dwarves got to Hobbiton -- before Posco puffed in that falsely-put-upon manner than most gentlehobbits perfect before they come of age. "I shall go and check the pantry then," he said, striding deeper into the smial. Gandalf might have called it a flounce, but he feared the hobbits would talk his ears off in indignation if he gave voice to that idea.

"Well!" Gilly turned and beamed up at him. "Never fear, Master Gandalf. We will be happy to host your dwarves for supper -- and you as well, of course, though I fear it will be a bit of a later supper than normal. You needn't go running off to Bywater after all!" She patted him on the arm, as she couldn't reach his shoulder.

Hmmm, Gandalf thought, there was one problem solved. And even if it was not, perhaps, the most pressing problem of the day, it was better than nothing.

"Your offer is most gracious, Mistress Baggins," he said, bowing, "and on behalf of the Company I would be delighted to accept it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The way distance is treated in the Hobbit movies has always really bothered me. Am I truly expected to believe that the dwarves all arrived at the Shire and got to Bag-End on the same day? Drawing heavily on the Atlas of Middle Earth for reference, the distance from Bywater (the location of the Green Dragon) to Hobbiton is about 5 miles, and it's about 50 miles from Bywater to the Bridge of Stonebows, which is the quickest way to get to Buckland from Hobbiton if you stay on the roads. The other end of the Shire, closer to Ered Luin, is even farther away from Hobbiton than Buckland is. I don't care how much endurance dwarves have, they cannot possibly have made that trek in a single day.
> 
> Therefore, I assume that the dwarves have all been traveling through the Shire for a few days already to be able to draw near to Bywater -- they've probably been taking the Great East Road, which cuts straight through the Shire and has a convenient side road heading for Bywater, and then Hobbiton beyond that. Gandalf has, of course, come ahead of them.
> 
> I really wanted to give Bag-End to Drogo Baggins, but he was just too young for it to be reasonable. Posco, while technically Bilbo's second-cousin, is the eldest relative of Bilbo's generation who could conceivably be married, and I think that after the disappearance of their son, Belladonna and Bungo would have wanted to give the house to a couple who would probably have children at some point along the way. Posco and Gilly are just about the only two Bagginses old enough and involved enough to fit that bill.


	3. On the Great East Road

Gossiping is another well-valued trait amongst the Shire hobbits, though one a bit less talked about than hospitality. Of course it would not be spoken of, for who wishes to advertise their gossiping? A gentlehobbit does not gossip, or at the very least, does not appear to gossip. Nevertheless it is commonly understood that gossip will happen, especially at relatively small, private tea parties, or at pubs and inns.

It is generally considered to be more tasteful to gossip only with close friends or relatives. One can be assured of their ability to keep a secret, after all, and if one is a gentlehobbit, the friend or relative is likely to share that status. It certainly is not conducive to attempting to out your partner as a gossiper, for they can easily turn and out you as well. The mutual desire to avoid a shameful social spectacle lends to a gossiping arrangement some degree of social security.

Outsiders, though, are fair game. They aren’t usually in the Shire for long enough to cause the sort of scandal that hobbits associate with gossip, and they will usually listen to anything one cares to tell them. Outsiders make the ideal deposits for the Shire’s deep wells of gossip and softly-whispered tales spun throughout the years.

Posco and Gilly Baggins were not immune to any of these tendencies.

.oOo.oOo.

The offer had been gracious. This Gandalf could easily admit. Hobbits, and especially the Baggins family, were not generally inclined to maliciousness, but they were inclined to act like hobbits. No, the entire debacle was thoroughly his own fault. He should never have accepted the invitation -- hadn't all his years taught him anything about how hobbit hospitality and hobbit gossip were liable to mix together into a scouring substance that could bring any secret to light?

Well, he could scold himself all he wanted. It would not help him to regain the tentative trust Thorin had placed in him when he had handed over the key and proposed the route of the side door, the trust that had soon thereafter shattered when someone -- he hadn’t seen who, not being in the room at the time, and nobody would tell him -- had quietly told Posco that he were very sorry for his loss, and asked how Bilbo had died.

Things had rather escalated from that point.

Gandalf knew that it was his own fault. He should have realized that no matter Posco’s muted sadness over Bilbo’s disappearance, the Baggins wouldn’t have missed a prime opportunity to dispense the tale at leisure. He ought to have said something, he knew, that would have discouraged gossiping for the night -- something, anything! He was good at spinning tales and explanations as sound as a well-made stone wall. And he _knew_ hobbits.

Yes, the entire mess was thoroughly Gandalf’s fault, and avoidable if he had just had some common sense. But he did his best not to further upset the boat, and Thorin finally began speaking to him again once they had left the Shire. But Gandalf still received the occasional dirty look from the various dwarves, especially Balin and Thorin, despite the renewed speaking terms of the latter. He was not invited to the gatherings around the fire that Thorin used to chart their course for the next day, Balin at his side.

The soft little knowledge that this was the fault of his own impulsiveness was like a miniature sun in Gandalf’s chest, burning.

.oOo.oOo.

The Great East Road was dotted throughout with ruins, great carven monoliths of red and gray granite, white marble, black marble and basalt. Ori had never seen their like before. Dwarven architecture was great and awe-inspiring, of course, but the structural supports and the greatness of size were possible only with the backbone of the mountain stone in which they were carved and built. These were great towers and citadels, or the remains thereof, reaching into the sky with nothing upon which to lean. He wanted a closer look -- so one evening when they had stopped early at the slope of a hill that led to another ruin of great black and dark dray stone, Ori told Nori where he was going (Dori would have stopped him) and scurried up the path to the ruins.

Crumbled stone greeted him not halfway there, gray blocks half-buried in the dirt and covered with lichen and creeping vines. Ori ran his hand along one of them, feeling the rough and pitted surface. Had the stone always been this texture, or had it once been smooth, the pitting a result of weather and time?

Closer to the ruin Ori could see deep, pointed furrows, like tree roots of metal and stone dug into the ground. Within the ruined walls the courtyard was cracked and bursting with grass, vines clambering up the walls and even a small tree colonizing a particularly disarrayed section of the floor, its roots growing around the stonework.

On the opposite wall there were a few reddish stones -- or was that the remains of paint, Ori wondered? Intrigued, he trotted over to the wall, noting a few more dashes of red as he did so. Perhaps the markings would help him figure out who the ruin had once belonged to. But then again, perhaps not, he thought as he approached closer. The red dashes were so dispersed that they could have been connected in any number of shapes.

But as he came closer, a slight shadow filtered into his gaze, cast by the angle of the setting sun and a small furrow carved into the rock. It seemed much dulled from what it had once been, but Ori could still see it quite clearly. It curved, and Ori followed the curve with his eyes, and as it curved he suddenly picked out the rest of the furrows and the shape that they had once held.

“Ori! Are you alright?”

The young dwarf spun, just barely preventing himself from tripping on an uprooted, broken rock in the floor. Dori stood in the ruined arch of the door, his arms crossed and eyebrow angled. Gandalf stood behind him, his bushy eyebrows drawn low over his eyes. He looked faintly worried.

“I’m fine,” Ori rushed his words. “I was just curious.”

“Can’t you be curious from a distance?” Dori said, using the particular tone of voice that Ori had always associated with scolding. He resisted the urge to stick out his tongue. “You don’t know how sturdy these old rocks are -- you could have been crushed and we wouldn’t have known!”

Ori made a show of looking at his feet. “Sorry,” he mumbled. But he couldn’t resist looking over his shoulder at the carvings on the wall behind him.

“Ah,” Gandalf sighed. “I see young master Ori has discovered the identity of the builder of these ruins.”

“You knew?” Ori blurted. “But -- are we safe?”

Dori looked sharply at the wizard. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Is there some wizard nonsense going on? Ori, come over here.”

For a moment, Ori hesitated. He didn’t see how a bunch of old rocks could hurt -- but Dori had his face on that meant he would take no arguments, and the Eye of Sauron _was_ carved into the wall behind him. Old and faded and ruined, paint chipped and overrun with vines and lichen it was, but it was still there. Ori did as Dori bade him.

“Fear not,” said Gandalf, though he took a good, long look at the opposite wall as he spoke. “We are safe. There is no evil here but that which haunts it from the past.”

Ori walked slowly as they headed back down the short slope to the camp, trying to keep himself abreast of Gandalf’s lazy tread. “What was it?” he asked, once he judged Dori out of earshot. “Why was...”

Gandalf turned to him then, eyeing him for a moment as though he were an interesting beetle. Ori gulped, but Gandalf’s expression soon turned open again, and he smiled at Ori. “I see you’ve been reading your history books diligently, then,” he said.

Ori smiled back, glad to be back on equal footing, if not on equal height. “Yes. I was always interested in Khazad-dûm when I was younger, and I’ve read a lot of the different histories of the second age. They had a... a replica of that in one of the manuscripts that the public wasn’t allowed to look at in the library in Ered Luin. I got to have a peek at it once I’d been accepted as an apprentice to one of the scribes there.”

“A wise choice,” Gandalf allowed. “I suspect letting a book like that circulate would cause panic and give people the wrong ideas.”

Ori nodded. Part of him had never believed that a simple collection of red, black, and yellow ink on a piece of parchment could cause much harm. But then he would remember his short time with _The Parties of the Wars of the Second Age_ , and he would wonder again for a bit at the malice that could be contained in a simple drawing, and now in a half-obliterated carving on a ruined wall. “I didn’t realize that the Dark Lord had had enough time to build in Eriador before he lost,” Ori mused. “Are all these ruins the same, Gandalf?”

“Well, some of them are, certainly,” said Gandalf, “and were once hiding places for orcs -- but others were built by the elves, and by the men of Arnor, to hold the line as they advanced and retook their lands from the dark forces. It’s not always easy to tell which is which, I’m afraid.” And he smiled sadly.

“I’ve never heard this sort of detail before -- can you tell me?” Ori exclaimed.

“Ho! You don’t know what you’ve got yourself into by asking me that, master Ori...”

For the rest of the evening, and most of the next day, Gandalf rode next to Ori’s pony and regaled the dwarf with tales of ancient days. He told of the way Sauron tricked the elves into creating weapons of war, which he stole to aid his armies in their bid to crush Eriador and Rhovanion. He told of the defeat of Eregion, and the way the armies of Mordor had slowly pushed their way through the realm, destroying all the lands upon which they could lay their claws; of the resurgence of morale when the Númenorians arrived with their great navy, and the end of the war. He told of the great kingdoms of the age, resplendant in wealth, and of their great achievements in all manner of the arts. As he spun his tales, more and more of the dwarves began to ride around him, listening to the words of an age gone by. Even Thorin, eventually, slowed his pace to listen, and Gandalf continued to speak even as they set up camp that night.

“You speak as though you were there to see them,” commented Thorin that night.

“Well!” Gandalf replied. “The records are there, if one only wishes to seek them out.” And he laughed softly to himself for a short time afterwards. Thorin pretended not to hear.

.oOo.oOo.

A few evenings later, the Company found themselves walking along a cliff that overlooked a valley to the side of the road. To be fair, it was less a valley than a ravine, or perhaps most accurately a combination of both. Sharp cliffs gouged their way into the landscape, the rocks jagged as though wrenched apart by some great force, but greenery nevertheless crept over the echoes of past destruction. Vines crawled their way up through the cracks between the lichen-stippled rocks, and in some of the flatter niches there was even enough space for some soil to have collected, sprouting moss and ferns. At the top of the cliff, the group eventually found their way to a few scattered boulders that lay patterned across the ground. Thorin determined that it would be safer to have the rocks at their back for the night, and gave the order to settle down.

For the most part they slept soundly -- or they would have, but for a short burst of howling from the other side of the valley near the beginning of the evening. Thorin insisted upon an extra watcher for each shift that night, himself staying up later than he perhaps ought to have. It was better, though, in the end, for the sounds of the howls had put him in mind of the Battle of Azanulbizar and left him unable to sleep in comfort. Once tired by his extra watch, however, he was able to drift off with little trouble, though his shield was not far from his arm.

Meanwhile on a farther cliff, a warg stood, hidden by the brush and trees. Its fur was a deep blackish-gray color in the moonlight, with scatterings of lighter silver-gray strands interspersed over its legs. This warg had a single rider who was dressed in black and dark brown leathers that were trimmed in white furs and serrated metal plating. Both rider and warg were motionless, or near to it. Occasionally the warg would sniff the air, and then would shuffle its feet or else growl softly, a sound that was stifled each time by a leather-covered hand flexing in the fur of its neck. The rider, for their part, stared near unblinkingly at the fire across the valley for a long while. They did not dismount from their warg, nor move to take the warg any closer to the edge. Only when a dark-haired dwarf wearing a fur-trimmed coat stood and walked past the fire, illuminating his face, did they react, a slow grin creeping over their face and illuminating sharp canines. Suddenly active, they bumped a leg against the side of their mount, and together warg and rider turned and raced down into the undergrowth.

Unbeknownst to all the other watchers of the night, Gandalf stayed up until the morning, seated in a niche in the rock that was in a deep shadow from the steady flicker of the fire. He spent it watching the valley and the far cliffs intently, and perhaps at one point during the changing of the dwarven watchers he observed a wolf-like shape leaping down the opposite cliff behind the trees. But when the morning came, he said nothing regarding it -- and so perhaps he had seen nothing after all.

.oOo.oOo.

About ten miles more down the road there was another camp. This camp was much smaller and less well equipped than the camp of the Company, and it looked much different, for the inhabitant wasn’t a dwarf. Furthermore, it wasn’t nearly as close to the Great East Road as the camp of the Company; but it was a camp, all the same. There was a small, nearly invisible tripwire wrapped around the tree trunks that surrounded the camp, and inside the tripwire was a small bundle of furs with a person inside, head resting on a leatherskin bag. Beside this makeshift bed there was a clump of netting, and a rather generous assortment of knives arranged within easy reach of the sleeping figure, blades stuck into the ground.

Soon after the Company had gotten themselves on the road, the figure mumbled something unintelligible and stirred. Then, with a sudden motion, the top layer of furs was thrown off and the person underneath sat up. He was so short that a casual observer might think him a dwarf. However, the distinctive lack of facial hair ruled that option out -- and when he stood from his makeshift bed, the hair on his feet declared him a hobbit. This hobbit's name was Matumlûtskrizgta, but this was quite long and difficult to say too often, so he usually went by Matu. This was a fairly common habit for his people -- most of them had names just as long, some even longer. Matu had curly, copper-brown hair that was folded into a number of small braids which dangled about his ears as he moved. In his left ear was a small, faintly engraved cuff of iron -- an earring, though wrapped around the top of the ear rather than piercing the lobe.

At this moment Matu wore only his smallclothes and some loose felt wrappings around his forearms. Briefly he wandered around the perimeter of his camp, checking each tree that the tripwire was wound around. He discovered no irregularities, or if he did they did not overly bother him, as he soon returned to the center of the camp without adjusting them. Rummaging through his leatherskin bag, he removed a pair of pants, a fur-trimmed tunic, and a larger number of felt wrappings as well as some leather cuffs and bracers. Quickly he pulled on the pants, and then the tunic over his head. It was fastened in the middle with a sash of coarse cloth, marked with patterned lines of dark red dye that looked as though they had been painted on with fingers. The felts and leathers were wrapped around his forearms and lower legs.

Dressed, the hobbit unwound the tripwire and stuffed both it and the nets into his bag. Then he reached for the knives that were stuck into the ground, liberating each carefully from the soil and running a hand over both sides of each blade, touching the tip quickly with the heel of this thumb. After each inspection he sheathed the knife somewhere about his person. The largest went to his hip, the smaller ones tucked into the wrappings around his legs, and the smallest tucked into a leather cuff decorated with fur that rested in the middle of his upper arm. When all the knives were safely tucked away, Matu pulled a rock away from the base of one of the trees and secreted his bag in the hollow so revealed before covering it again and leaving the little clearing looking as uninhabited as the rest of the forest.

.oOo.oOo.

Matu was hunting for food. He had not had much luck in the northern parts of the wood, which was why he was not yet on his way back to where his kin-group lived in the plains north of the forest. He supposed that most of the others would be making their way back by now, for he couldn't imagine that they had had worse luck than he. Matu did his best to feel pleased for them, but still he wasn’t very excited about having to spend this much time away from his family. There could be all sorts of this people hanging around this close to the Big Road. He didn't like the idea of running into a pack of rangers, or any other Zâluk, really.

Forcing himself to move quickly through the midmorning chill that hadn't yet burnt off from the night before, the hobbit padded along the moss-covered ground. Pale green ferns and other sprouting plants pushed up from the green and brown carpeting of the forest floor, and great tree roots dug moss-covered furrows and ridges in the soil. The occasional large stones were covered with pale purple lichens and creeping vines. Matu made his way easily past all these obstacles. He was going to check the traps that he had set up the morning before last, hoping that they had reaped enough food to let him leave the vicinity of the Road.

His hopes were answered when he finally reached the first snare. A pair of rabbits was strung up, their noses twitching. Matu allowed himself a small grin before he tugged a knife from its sheath against his leg. Slowly he approached the rabbits, and he untangled the first one from the trap of cord as gently as he could. The hobbit didn’t like hurting people or animals unnecessarily -- it made him feel wretched. The rabbit was still going to die, because he needed food for his family, but Matu saw absolutely no point in making the ordeal any more distressing for the small creature than it had to be.

Once both rabbits had been returned to the campsite and set up for smoking and drying, Matu went to check the other snares. The second was empty, and he frowned at it disapprovingly, but the third was full of a struggling chicken. The presence of the bird was both pleasant and a little disconcerting, and Matu found himself frowning at the white mass of feathers. He didn't move to undo the snare and kill the chicken for a while, instead chewing his lip while he wondered. Chickens weren't wild birds -- they were only ever found on Zâluk farms, or sometimes in small flocks herded and tended by the faunts of a rich clan like the Vnjeushârvthûlu. He had never heard of a chicken being caught in a snare before.

A few more moments of consideration and Matu freed the bird -- or he tried to. He took a few scratches to the face before he managed to get a hold of its legs, preventing the bird from fighting too hard. In vain he searched the white feathers for any sign of a dye-mark that would identify it as belonging to a fellow clan of Ûrukha. After all, if it turned out to belong to a nearby clan and he took it without payment, he could accidentally cause an interclan feud. The last one had been when Matu was a tween, and that had been bad enough. But he could find no such mark.

There wasn't any farm nearby, was there?

Matu thought on this problem for a moment before shaking his head. There was no farm -- he would have noticed if there were. But why a chicken?

Well, he reasoned, if there was no trace of any dye-mark, it probably had ultimately belonged to a Zâluk’s farm. There was no reason to respect that sort of claim, so Matu dealt with the chicken much as he had the two rabbits. Then he set off to examine the fourth and final snare.

This process turned out to be a little more difficult than he had expected. For the first part, the area immediately surrounding the snare had become absolutely choked with vines in the time since he had set it up.

“These -- rude -- ” Matu grumbled to himself as he cut his way through a patch of thick vines that most certainly had not been there the day before. “By the dead gods, _why_!” he finally cried, thoroughly annoyed with everything. The vines were thick and brownish-green, and relatively leafless, which he supposed was a blessing. But they were _everywhere_ and he could not understand how they had gotten there.

After a while longer of pushing his way slowly through the mass of vegetation, he finally reached the place where he had set his snare. The contraption was barely visible through the vines, dark brown cord blending into the surroundings. But when he approached a few steps he could see tufts of gray-brown fur on the cord, and he knew he must have caught something, hopefully another rabbit. There were no signs of a struggling body, though, which was... unusual. Matu rather hoped that the rabbit hadn't died in the snare without a prayer to send it to the sun.

Another step forward, and something that felt stick-like under Matu's foot made a very un-stick-like cracking sound. Slowly, the hobbit looked down.

Below the snare were scattered bones. They were rabbit bones. Now, Matu had skinned and eaten plenty of rabbits in his life, never mind various other small animals, so he was familiar enough with the sight. But he was disturbed, nevertheless, by the part where he could see _only_ bones. The small white objects were cleansed of every identifying feature -- the flesh, the skin, even the ligaments were gone. Everything of note was stripped clean. There was not even a trace of blood, on the bones or on the ground. And they were scattered around the ground as though a predator had picked on them, but there was no meat.

Slowly, Matu reached down to pick up the closest bone. It was a pale, curving rib, absolutely sparkling clean like the bones that the healers left out to dry in the sun so they could be used for jewelry. He couldn’t even feel the tackiness of fat that should have remained on the surface of the bone if it had been cleaned that day by someone with a knife and scouring equipment.

In the silence, he thought he heard a soft humming note.

Matu stared at the bone in his hand. Then, tentatively, he brought it to his ear. At first there was nothing to be heard but the rush of his own blood and his breath in his chest, but as he calmed and the stillness grew, he heard it -- a high, sharp, clear note like a bell, echoing across the surface of bone, before it turned suddenly and punched its way into his ear like a dart. Matu dropped the bone and stumbled away into the curtain of vines, reeling from the pain and the ringing in his ears. But he soon steadied himself.

"Spirits," he murmured to himself.

This had just gotten a bit complicated.

.oOo.oOo.

Matu wasn’t averse to a certain level of complexity, but everyone knew that spirits were trouble. They could do things that varied from killing you for touching a tree to following you about insistently until they had undone all your braids, anything in between, and probably a few things that fell completely off the line previously considered. They never explained themselves, and most of them couldn’t even talk -- or if they could, they never did. If you were lucky, you might find yourself overwhelmed by a sudden emotion that did not belong to you, and you were left trying to understand what the spirit wanted from that isolated emotion. It was a fiddly business at best, and most of the advice Matu had heard concerning spirits was to leave them alone if you were able.

He was not exactly following that advice at the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of plot threads in this chapter! I'm really sorry at the delay. I've galvanized myself into action now that school's out for the summer, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to get deep enough into the tale to maintain momentum when it starts up again.
> 
> I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that this whole undertaking is, ultimately, a first draft. It's a pretty good first draft, I like to think -- if I didn't think it was pretty good I wouldn't be posting it on a public website. But it's ultimately a first draft. I suspect edits to come in the future, and one of the things I really wanted to do was not gloss over the party at Bag End and actually show the falling-out between Gandalf and the dwarves over Bilbo's death. I originally intended for the party and the falling-out to receive the whole third chapter, and to put the meat of the chapter you see before you into the fourth chapter. But it just was not working. A good friend of mine suggested that I could 'Shakespeare' it, which you'll see in the beginning of the chapter -- so I have, in the interests of not getting stuck forever on that chapter. But my point is, if the plot point of Gandalf losing trust seems rushed or glossed over, I know. I'm sure it does, and I'm sorry. I'm likely to return at some point and fix it, but for now the story must go on! 
> 
> I'm sure everyone knows or suspects who 'Matu' is. But we're not exactly going to come to this specific realization for a long time yet... And I purposely haven't translated a number of the non-name terms from Matu's section. Those will be the subject of much discussion later in the tale, and I don't want to ruin the surprise.


End file.
